Cynical? Hell Yeah.
by metac0m
2002-11-08 12:33:56
You know what makes me sick? It's always "them" and never "us". That's why our "best intentions" usually end up making things worse. Why is it that the latest threat, dictator, or terrorist always ends up being our former ally, friend, or as Franklin D. Roosevelt said of the Nicaraguan dictator Somoza, "our son of a bitch"?
Now the terms "them" and "us" are gross exaggerations, but since the world has been so conveniently divided into "good" and "evil" by the prevailing wisdom of our times I thought it appropriate.
Internet censorship is a crime. Period. Therefore any progressive steps taken towards its ultimate abolishment are good. But while encouraging and supporting such efforts it would be evil not to point out the inherent flaws in the misguided efforts of elite politicians who, no matter how genuine their concern, are crafting a bill full of self-righteous prose that entirely ignores a fundamental issue concerning Internet censorship: "our" own complicity. And by doing so will relegate a glorious opportunity to irrelevance and failure.
Moralize all you want, but there's not much in the Global Internet Freedom Act's case against repressive "foreign" regimes that "we" don't do ourselves on one level or another. We employ censorware against children in high school – content filtering software that has been proven to block legitimate websites, not to mention the fact that we've delegated the parental responsibility of raising out children to the secret blacklists of the same corporate scum that sets up shop in Saudi Arabia to implement Internet censorship in that country. You think that your boss doesn't read you email? Our government conducts Internet surveillance on us using Echelon and Carnivore. Things are getting worse. Yeah, the new McCarthyism is upon us. Our government (sic) has done it before, they're doing it now, and they'll do it again.
Sure the scope and intensity is varied but the technologies and the policies are comparable. The difference is in the immediate result: "here" you might lose you job, "there" you might lose your head. The point, however, is not wrangle over who's got the biggest dick but to recognize that "our" battle with Internet censorship is "their" battle – and their battle ultimately involves us challenging our own governments, our own corporations, and our own society.
Self-censorship and censorship under the gun are both CENSORSHIP. It's so easy to point the finger at others; really, we should be pointing the finger at ourselves. If you give a dictator guns, political support or censorware -- and don't give me any "once-removed" shit -- you support a dictator. You fucking support a dictator. Time to fess the fuck up.
The "free" world has a long and bloody history of supporting fascist fucks. We know about IBM's role in helping Hitler carry out The Holocaust. [http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2002/03/27/ibm-nazi.htm] We know about the varying degrees of involvement by Swiss Banks and American Corporations. [http://www.spx.org/faculty/holocaust/klein/American_corporations.html] It's not just that no one said anything, it's not just that we didn't know (both cowardly cop-outs in my opinion) – we WERE involved.
This is not partisan either. It sickens me when I hear people from the "Left", with which I myself identify, apologizing for the human rights abuses in Cuba because they have great health care. I don't give a shit. Some are even apologists for China and North Korea because they claim to be "communist" countries. And on the "Right" too, supporting some nasty-ass, murderous, dictator because he keeps taxes down and sweatshops open. Fuck it. Call ‘em as you see ‘em.
"We" are involved in Internet censorship. Cisco, Nortel, Websense and more make Internet censorship a technological reality, here and abroad. Why is there not a single word about corporate complicity in the Global Internet Freedom Act? The failure to face the FACTS undermines any moral credibility -- and any hope for success -- the Act and its backers might have, no matter how noble their intentions might be.
And just what do they want to do? What every government does: open an office and hire some bureaucrats. Wow, what a brilliant idea. Then the bureaucrats can throw money at "the problem" (while cooperating with other bureaucracies – fat chance) and hope it goes away. They'll also produce reports on how Internet censorship is being implemented, leaving out of course "our" companies that make the shit, and for good measure they'll get the UN to rubber stamp it. Cynical? Hell yeah.
Just be sure, nothing in the Act will "interfere with foreign national censorship for the purpose of protecting minors from harm, preserving public morality, or assisting with legitimate law enforcement aims." Are those not the EXACT fucking excuses that China, Saudi Arabia and others use to justify Internet censorship? Are those not the EXACT excuses "our" governments use to spy on us, to keep "classified" information from us.
It took SF Chronicle reporter Seth Rosenfeld 17 years to get the FBI to release documents on how they spied on, harassed and infiltrated the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. Then-California Governor Ronald Reagan referred to students and faculty engaging in open, public debate about legitimate policy issues "filthy speech advocates" and worked with the FBI to shut them down. [http://www.sfgate.com/news/special/pages/2002/campusfiles/]
CBC aired a documentary the other day about an indigenous group in the Philippines. These people are trying to take a land claim to court to try to get back some of their land and they are being terrorized. Their leaders are being murdered their homes occasionally strafed with gun fire all in an attempt to terrorize them. But there is no help from this terrorism for them. No helicopters, no protection, no interest. The "war on terror" is a farce – a charade. See the gunmen terrorizing this indigenous group are not a "threat" to us and the Government is "our" ally – so we don't care – and the exact process that got us to this point starts all over again.
However, these people now have a digital video camera, donated by WITNESS – they tape the incidents of violence, their meeting with police and other officials in order to bring pressure on them to act. With the visual images of their struggle they are gaining popular support.
These are the types of grassroots efforts we should support.
Therefore "we" should not accept government money based on the Global Internet Freedom Act. By accepting these tainted funds we become agents of the government – whether the intent is there or not we become, in the eyes of the world, agents for hire. We become a part of something from which we should be distancing ourselves: hypocrisy.